Sky Ferreira's been quiet on the music front since the release of her excellent debut Night Time, My Time. But that album dropped in 2013 -- it's been over two years since we got any new music from the singer.

Still, she insists she's hard at work on her follow-up album Masochism and things are finally falling into place. In an interview with Beat Magazine, Ferreira opened up extensively about the writing process and the benefit of removing herself from the public eye in order to live her life for a bit.

She laid low on purpose, saying, "I did consciously want to keep a pretty low profile and not give out too many details about things. I want people to be excited for my record and see it as something else, not just a continuation of something I was doing three years ago. I felt like I needed to pull back a little bit. For me, I get excited when I haven’t seen or heard much from an artist for a while.”

And while it was frustrating to read what others were writing about her at the time (a 2013 arrest of Ferreira and boyfriend Zacahary Cole Smith led to accusations of drug abuse at the time), she kept a low profile anyway: "I needed to get away from that to be able to write properly. I didn’t want to write songs about touring or airports, you know what I mean? I needed to go back and live my life again, outside of all that stuff. I didn’t want to go on autopilot.”

With the help of Mike Dean, who’s worked with Kanye West and Travis Scott, and Rahki, who’s worked in the past with Kendrick Lamar, Ferreira says Masochism is more personal than Night Time, My Time.

She said, "There are a lot of personal moments. I feel like now because I’m getting older that I’m getting more perspective on things, a greater understanding of situations. Stepping away from them has helped, if you know what I mean. I’m still a pretty angry person – it’s not like it’s going to be zen or anything – but I feel more confident about myself. In a way that I wasn’t at all, ever. I’m learning my own self value.”

She continued, "There are songs about being self-destructive, you know, or being around things that aren’t good for you, but it’s about realizing that I don’t have to feel miserable. I always thought I had to suffer for it to be real or feel good. But that’s not always the case. I went through this stage of being numb because I was exhausted from people making me feel bad about feeling things. I was like, “I can’t do this anymore,” so I shut down. I was a dormant volcano. I couldn’t work properly. Now I feel like I’m about to write much better songs. I could put this stuff out in three months from now or I could wait and it would be a lot better.”

And if you’re wondering what ever happened to Ferreira’s rumored lead single off the album "Guardian," which was due out this past summer, she has an explanation: "I delayed it initially because of the video, but now I’m doing way better stuff so I didn’t want to put it out and it become an 'Everything Is Embarrassing' situation where there’s a song, it comes out, and then nothing else comes out for ages. If I did that again then it would delay the album and I want to make sure it’s promoted properly this time.”

Read the entire interview over at Beat.

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